Not many hours of sunlight now to harvest dry firewood. I'm scrambling to find enough dry balsam fir and spruce to supplement the couple of cords of birch I put away last spring. There was just too much snow for me to get more birch at the time.
I would like to recommend a new CBC show about nature and climate change. It is done by meteorologist Johanna Wagstaffe and I think most of you will find it fun and extremely interesting.
Just the name of the first show: What are Trees Saying To Each Other About Climate Change? should perk your curiosity. One of her guests is Suzanne Simard, the British Columbia forester who discovered how trees communicate.
Here's the link: Planet Wonder.
If you want a hoot, listen to this Bob Snider song about climate change.
5 comments:
Dan I see you burn a lot of wood and studies show wood burning stoves account for 2.5% of the particulate matter in Canada and greater than 36% when you take out the non-populated areas. Have you ever explored Geo-thermal heat and cooling? Sitting next to that stove on a cold day or evening is always nice but environmentally don't they do more harm than good? Maybe Geo-thermal isn't an option for you and electric is too pricey and even gas costs are up. Please don't take offense to my questions. Just curious as to your options and thoughts on this subject.
Mike S.
Ground source heat pumps, I think that is what you are referring to about geo-thermal, right? Actual geo-thermal heating requires a near-surface vent from the Earth's molten center, like you would find in Iceland. Not an option most places, including here.
Smoke particulates are a problem in densely populated communities, but not where I live. Also, high-efficiency wood stoves like ours re-burn exhaust gases and eliminate almost all the smoke. There's just some on start-up. Once the fire is going at speed there is only heat coming out of the chimney.
All the points you bring up are a matter of perspective and relativity. We burn firewood, but we also have a propane furnace. We also have electric heaters. When we are awake and tending the stove, that is our only heating source. We intentionally have a small stove so that we always have a "hot" fire, not a smouldering one like you might with a larger stove. This also eliminates the need to clean the chimney. We also only burn seasoned dry wood. No creosote. Almost no smoke. But we need to tend the stove with new firewood every few hours.
In extremely bitter times, our high-efficiency propane furnace isn't quite enough so we turn on a couple of electric heaters in cool areas of the house.
All of our energy conservation efforts result in us burning about four cords of firewood a year. That is less than half what a typical home here burns.
In those populated areas, the biggest sources of particulates come from the internal combustion engine - cars, trucks, buses, etc. If your region still generates with coal, that dwarfs everything else.
I foresee that in the future all heating will be electric, except for areas like ours where we can supplement it with wood. Firewood is not a fossil fuel. Burning it does generate CO2 but then the new trees absorb it again. With fossil fuels we are taking all the carbon that has ever been in the atmosphere over billions of years and puffing it up into the sky in just a few decades.
Thanks Dan
But my use of the Geothermal heat may have been incorrect in that what I was referring to is a pump that pulls water from deep within the ground and circulates it through a blower that pushes the warmer air through your heat ducts and uses the same process in the summer to cool the air. Possibly with the rock you have there it would be difficult to drill a well deep enough to pull the water from deep under ground. Perhaps the correct term was Ground Source Heat Pumps.
Appreciate your blog and look for the updates daily. When is the next chapter of the book coming?
Mike S
Sorry, Mike
You were right. I see the ground source heat pump system is called geothermal.
It is definitely a choice here. I know of several people who have it. It is also the most expensive system to install but one of the cheapest to operate. The last person I know of who got it figured it would take 7-10 years before it started paying off.
It is likely the best way to use electrical as a heat-cooling source.
Straight electrical heat from heating elements is currently the most expensive method of heating.
Next chapter is just ahead.
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